American Isolationism: The Mock Trial of Hitler

In our last post on American isolationism before WWII we ended with the promise of an extraordinary demonstration against German fascism that took place in the U.S. in March 1934. That event was a mock trial of Adolf Hitler.

This article depends for its quotations on two good sources: “Publicly Deliberative Drama: The 1934 Mock Trial of Adolf Hitler for ‘Crimes against Civilization'”, Louis Anthes, The American Journal of Legal History , Vol. 42, No. 4 (Oct., 1998), pp. 391-410; and In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson, Crown, NY, 2011.

The trial, which was attended by 20,000 people, was sponsored by many groups; it originated with the American Jewish Congress and included many labor unions–in fact, two months earlier New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and AFL Vice-President Matthew Woll had led what they termed a working-class anti-fascist rally at the same location, Madison Square Garden. Now they joined two dozen other leaders in American society, religion, and politics, including former New York Court of Appeals Judge Samuel Seabury; John Haynes Holmes, Minister of the Community Church of New York City; Raymond Moley, former Under-Secretaryof State under Roosevelt; and Mayor LaGuardia.

The Case of Civilization v. Hitler begain with an indictment against Hitler and his government which, amongst other crimes, “has not only destroyed the foundations of the German Republic, but, under penalty of death, torture, and economic extermination, and by process of progressive strangulation, has reduced and subjugated to abject slavery all sections of its population.” Hours of speeches from the famous men assembled concluded with a decision against the Nazis. [Anthes 392]

The Nazi government was furious. It had protested to the U.S. State Department before the trial, news of which had reached Germany in February, and Hans Luther, the German Ambassador to the U.S. met repeatedly with State Deparment personnel, including Secretary Cordell Hull; each complaint and meeting ended with the Americans repeating that “our constitutional guaranties of freedom of expression” prohibited the federal government from stopping the trial, or any other peaceful public demonstration. The Germans persisted in complaining, and six days after the trial Luther raged to Hull that “such offensive and insulting acts by the people of one country against the Government and its officials of another country” should not be tolerated. Four days later, he appeared in Hull’s office with a list of what Luther described as “abusive and insulting expressions of American citizens toward the Hitler Government.” [Larson 239]

Hull’s reponse was firm: “…America’s relationship with the previous German government had been ‘uniformly agreeable’ and [it] was only during the control of the present government that the troubles complained of had arisen… The whole problem would go away, Hull intimated, if Germany ‘could only bring about a cessation of these reports of personal injuries which had been coming steadily to the Unitd Stats from Germany and arousing bitter resentment among many people here.” [Ibid, 240]

The mock trial of Hitler on March 7, 1934 was followed by a few other trials and many rallies against fascism, culminating in another Madison Square Garden rally in July 1942, led by Rabbi Wise, against Nazi atrocities. By that time, of course, the U.S. was at war with Nazi Germany. There are echoes of the 1934 trial in the Nuremburg Trials after the war, which the U.S. insisted upon over British and Soviet objections (Britain wanted show trials without a defense, if any, and the Soviets wanted to go straight to executions).

This trial and the anti-Nazi demonstrations that preceded and followed it do not, of course, mean that there was no pro-Nazi sentiment in the U.S; there was, and American fascists held their own rallies and marches. The largest was the German American Bund, which also drew 20,000 people to a rally in New York on President’s Day 1939. One feels more certain that many people attending this rally were truly isolationist; by February 1939 war was just months away, Germany had annexed the Sudetenland and Austria, and there was more concrete concern about America entering another war.

But the majority of Americans in the 1930s were not knee-jerk isolationists; they despised Nazism and were willing to oppose it in many ways, from boycotts to signing petitions to working with relief groups to try to help Jewish Germans. They did not want to fight another war, but they did not refuse to acknowledge that a) the Nazis had to be stopped, and b) that war might be the only way to do this. There is always a vocal minority that grabs the national spotlight; here we have two: the 20,000 who rallied against Hitler and the 20,000 who rallied for him. Given the commitment of Americans to the principles of our Constitution, and their willingness to fight once war did come, it is hard to believe that the latter group had more unspoken support amongst Americans than the former.

I’ve just read it too, very interesting in the contezt of the current debate over that idiotic video and freedom of speech. Here’s the text from a comment I’ve just submitted to a New York Times Op Ed:

I’ve just been reading about an incident that occurred when Ambassador William Dodd was the new Ambassador to Hitler’s Germany, near the begining of Hitler’s reign, 1934. A group of opponents of Hitler and his NAZI party, led by a “Rabbi Wise”, organized a mock trial in New York to hold Hitler accountable for his persecution of Jews, then just the leading tip of the iceberg. The NAZIs were furious about this and repeatedly lobbied the State Department to put a stop to it. The Undersecretary of State in charge of European affairs, kept explaining to them that in the US freedom of speech was a basic right. In the end the German demands softened to pleading that the US government at least issued a statement to the effect that “these views do not represent those of the US Goverment”, which was again refused by the Undersecretary of State, on the grounds that “we won’t be able to issue such a statement, not knowing at this stage what views are to be expressed”.

It’s interesting in the context of this article, it isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last time that freedom of speech is put to the test. In the case described above that freedom was used in a way that I 100% approve of, and in the current case of that idiotic video I can say that I 100% disapprove. Reminds me of that line from Voltaire, no doubt in the minds of those that first framed the constitution: “I don’t agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”.